At the end of last year, I questioned whether to continue with my blog. After seven years and 320 posts, surely I'd covered pretty much all I had to say about financial independence and retiring early.
I still think that's true which is why, over the past four months, there have been zero posts. But maybe it's time for an update - what's happened between then and now, and are there any plans for the future?
As I said, I've not written a single blog post. I've kind of missed that.
No blog posts seems to have translated into me being less good at setting and then checking in on my targets and on how much we spend.
My instinct is that something has been missing from my early retirement life during the first three months of the year.
But I have made some plans for later in the year.
No blog posts
I still think it's true that I've said most of what I have to say on financial independence and early retirement, and I don't want to invent posts just for the sake of it. On that basis, stepping away from my weekly blog posting still feels like the right decision. However, there are some downsides to this too.
If you've read some of my blog before, you'll know that I like routine and believe they've been a cornerstone in making my early retirement a success. My blog was great for this. Setting a schedule to post each Friday meant putting time aside to think of ideas and then write each post to hit my posting schedule. That took more time than you might imagine. On top of that, my blog encouraged me to think more about different subjects and sometimes look at them from a different perspective, both good and enjoyable things to do. And finally, I found some community in my blog, on a weekly basis via the comments and, now and again, by physically meeting up with readers in the USA, Australia, Thailand, the UAE, and France. I've missed the community aspect.
My blog also served as an effective feedback and self-assessment tool for my spending and for the things that I want to do. Once a month, I'd post a review of my early retirement costs and my progress against the targets I'd set, a process that made me constructively review whether I was happy with my spending and actually getting on with the things I want to do (and not wasting my days watching YouTube!). Absent my blog, I'm still keeping a record of my early retirement costs, but perhaps not writing about them each month is contributing to them running higher than has been the case in the past. As to my early retirement targets, almost four months into the year, I've only just written them down and I haven't tracked them once - as my school report used to say, "could do better". In case you're interested, I'll put my costs for the first 3 months of the year and also my early retirement target tracker later in this post.
Is something missing from early retirement life so far this year?
Early retirement life is still great, but I do feel there is something missing compared to previous years, although I'd struggle to put my finger on what the missing ingredient is.
Perhaps it's a combination of it often taking a while during January to get back into my stride after Christmas, followed by having a small hernia surgery that limited my activities in February. Maybe a reduction in routine from not doing my blog is another contributor.
Although, when I think through those first three months of the year, we've had Sally's sister visit followed by my friend coming for five days skiing in January. In February, with my activities limited after surgery, we took the opportunity to take a vacation to Istanbul and Oman. Then, in March, my daughter and I had a long weekend in Paris where we went to a John Mayer concert, and I took a quick trip to the UK. So, it's not that I've done nothing, but perhaps because I'm not writing it down in a blog or a journal, I'm not remembering it as well as when I do write it down.
There's one last thing. Sally is wondering whether she wants to return to teaching in 2025. If she decides to go ahead, that would be an adventure if we found ourselves living in a new country. However, until her decision to teach or not is taken, there is an uncertainty in my life - will we do it or won't we? My personality prefers having clear objectives for which I can prepare and plan for. I'm not so well suited to uncertainty, and maybe that's contributing to my feeling that early retirement life has been a little out of balance during the first three months of the year.
However, there are some plans in place for the rest of the year
Next week, we head to the UK for a month before returning to France for the summer, which is our favourite time in the Alps. There's a saying that winter is the reason people move to the mountains, but summer is why they stay.
After enjoying summer in the Alps, we'll head to the Philippines for a little under 3 months, two of which we'll volunteer in a local school. As a teacher by profession, Sally will be great at this, while I'm a little anxious as it's something I've never done and is therefore outside my comfort zone. I'm still looking forward to it though, and I believe that sometimes being pushed beyond our comfort zone is a good thing. For the remaining month in the Philippines, we'll spend half the time with our friends who live there and the other half visiting some places we've not been to before.
Another activity I'm considering is doing a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) course. I'm thinking it might help me be more effective in my volunteering in the Philippines. Also, my struggles to learn French have highlighted how little I understand the grammar of my own English language. Perhaps I simply slept through my English lessons at school - I know what nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are, and thought there were three tenses (past, present and future), but it turns out that's just the tip of the iceberg. It would be interesting to better understand the grammar of my native language.
So, May in the UK, a fun summer in the Alps (I'm thinking friends, running, cycling, hiking, picnics and coffee), perhaps studying a TEFL course during those summer months too (I'm considering a 120 hour course or a 168 hour course, so a substantial time commitment), three months for volunteering/travel in the Philippines starting in September, and then a couple of weeks in the UK in December. The year suddenly seems quite full, and writing it down makes early retirement life feel like it's back on track!
Early retirement costs - 3 months January to March 2024
Starting with our costs, it works out that we've spent an average of £6,472 / €7,508 / US$8,220 a month. That's higher than we have spent in the past as the below table shows.
Inflation has caused the cost of living to increase over the past two years, and comparisons are difficult - I'm looking at a snapshot of just 3 months so far this year as opposed to full year averages elsewhere. In some years we've travelled a lot (sometimes as much as 4 months), other years much less. In 2017 we were living in Dubai, since 2019 we've been in France, and foreign currency exchange rates will also influence the numbers to an extent.
However, these things don't change the headline which is that by the time we get to December, I hope the 2024 average monthly cost is much reduced from what I'm seeing now. I can't help thinking about our friends who are retired in the Philippines on €20,000 a year whereas we spent that much in just 80 days...Ouch!
In reality, it's mainly our travel expenditure that has run high during January to March. That includes a trip to the UK for each of Sally and me, although they aren't particularly costly trips. More costly was our trip to Istanbul and Oman in February, a family trip to Spain scheduled for April to celebrate a big birthday for Sally and, to a lesser extent, my trip to Paris.
Early retirement targets - 3 months January to March 2024
At the end of last year, in addition to wondering whether I should continue with my blog, I also questioned whether I'm sometimes too fixated on my targets and perhaps a more relaxed approach would be better.
Well, I've generally taken a more relaxed approach in the first three months of this year, and I don't think it works so well for me. I only finalised my targets recently and today is the first time that I've gone through them to see how I'm performing. What I've noticed is that I've enjoyed the process of reviewing them today, but that my more relaxed attitude so far means that I'm not doing so well with them.
Just looking at them now enthuses me. I want to be more consistent with my stretching and think how I can improve my feeling of community. I should try new recipes more often and I find it exciting to think of what I could put in a five-year plan. The five-year plan is important to me - I retired when I was forty-seven, but next month I'll turn fifty-five, so five years would take me to sixty which sounds a little scary. The next five years are not ones that I can afford to waste!
So, that's my early retirement life update. It's been a long post, I've enjoyed taking the time to remember what I've done in the first three months of the year and to think of what the rest of the year and beyond can include. There won't be lots of posts, but I'll try not to leave it quite so long until the next update.